1. Field of the Invention
The method and apparatus of the present invention relate to the field of configuring boundaries and monitoring objects thereby.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are numerous locating, tracking and monitoring protocols in use today, for use in conjunction with physical boundaries and fences, as necessary to locate, track and monitor the location and proximity of an object relative to the physical boundary. Such objects may be animate or inanimate, such as pets, livestock, valuables, inventory, equipment, personnel, and the like. Although locating an object to be tracked may be readily achieved using transmitter/receiver-based technology, tracking and monitoring systems of the related prior art have proven to be limited and limiting in their application. More particularly, related prior art systems generally require fixed boundaries or points of reference against which an independently movable object to be tracked is monitored. Moreover, the larger the circumscribed area or the more buildings within the circumscribed area, or an area ranging over challenging topographical and geographical terrain typically becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to monitor, and indeed, contain the object to be tracked. Even after establishing an initial physical boundary or fence, it may later be desired to alter the geographical region in which the tracked object is permitted to roam.
Alternatively, it may be desirable to provide durational limitations to accessing certain geographical areas. In those instances, prior art transportable physical boundaries are poorly suited to these changing needs and requirements. Additionally, prior art physical boundaries may undesirably hinder the establishment of acceptable points of ingress and egress over the boundary, and even in those instances, prior art technology fails to provide means for monitoring those points of ingress/egress or for doing so on a real-time basis. In any case, the related prior art does not provide for modification of desired boundaries from a remote location, or for tracking or monitoring of the tracked object from the remote location.
Several solutions to the problem of tracking and monitoring objects to be tracked have been tried or implemented with varying levels of success. For example, simple physical boundaries such as fencing provides a physical impediment to ingress and egress from a desired bounded area. However, simple fencing is typically labor intensive in its erection, maintenance and monitoring, and is poorly suited to rapid relocation on a time- and cost-effective basis. Concealed, electronic-based fencing typically used to control or limit otherwise uncontrollable excursions by some household pets beyond the fenced area also requires a physical installation, which is also labor intensive and likewise poorly suited to modification on an expedited basis. Such systems utilize radio frequency identification in which a radio frequency transmitter is attached or carried by the object to be identified and tracked by a remotely located receiver. However, this method is only effective if one is willing to go to the effort of placing the equipment within the xe2x80x9cread rangexe2x80x9d of the receiver. As this typically does not occur during the use of this type of equipment because most transmitter/receiver pairs operate at low power over a relatively short range, the object to be tracked is essentially xe2x80x9clostxe2x80x9d if located a substantial distance from the last point that the transmitter was read, such that the transmitter must be continuously transmitting within the read range of the receiver, and sporadic reading of the receiver outside of the read range will fail to provide a consistent and complete stream of information regarding tracking and trajectory history of the object to be tracked, with a resulting absence of dependable and reliable on-demand tracking and monitoring feedback information.
For tracking protocols which do not use physical boundaries, individual objects to be tracked do not carry radio frequency transmitters, and the objects must be physically tracked by an attendant, the location of the tracked object confirmed only at the particular moment the attendant scans in object-specific information as by bar-coding and the like. Thus, prior art tracking systems fail to provide readily and dynamically reconfigurable boundaries, important on-demand tracking, and self-reporting monitoring feedback information, as well as the capability to do all of the above from a location remote from the area to be bounded.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method of readily establishing and dynamically configuring and reconfiguring boundaries against which the excursions of an object is tracked and monitored, and for monitoring excursions of an object to be tracked with immediate response, all from a location remote from the region to be bounded.
The present invention is a method and apparatus for identifying, locating, and monitoring an object to be tracked within a user-defined area. The invention utilizes a communications network to establish a dynamically reconfigurable xe2x80x9cvirtualxe2x80x9d boundary against which proximity and excursions of the tracked object is monitored, and notification is provided to the user for user-specified contingent action if the tracked object crosses the virtual boundary or a defined opened or closed bounded area, hereinafter referred to as a xe2x80x9cbounding boxxe2x80x9d. According to the invention, a simple or complex bounding box may be virtually drawn, against which positional and other temporal information unique to the tracked object is compared to determine the current and subsequent locations of the tracked object relative to the bounding box, report and record the excursions, and updating current and historical positional information on a real-time or other user-defined basis.
A location monitoring system for uploading user requirements (defining the virtual boundary or bounding box) and downloading tracking and monitoring information is interfaced with the selected communications network through a world-wide-web site or private network. A radio-frequency transmitter is carried by the object to be tracked. Real-time feedback is provided alone or in combination by e-mail, through the world-wide-web in audio-visual format, and via independent audio stream and/or video display, and may be implemented in an electronic commerce environment.